Success Impulse: Are you sleeping through the future in sales?
Does the performance of your sales teams leave much to be desired? Are you closing fewer and fewer deals as a salesperson? This could be because you are working with outdated methods.
It's no longer a secret. And yet most salespeople and entire sales teams try to ignore this simple fact: Sales will be different tomorrow than it was yesterday, and especially in B2B (business-to-business).
The reasons have been mentioned a thousand times: Buyers are much better informed, take less time, have much more choice ("global sourcing"), etc. And yet very many sellers find it extremely difficult to adapt.
Customer visits are carried out as in the past, with the hope of persuading the potential customer to buy by presenting the products. It is still expected that the prospective customer will contact me, because after all he has a "need". It's assumed that the prospect will read my emails and listen to my voicemails.
Here comes the brutal truth: Forget it! If you win a customer using these outdated methods, you've won the lottery. Congratulations! Only you won't be able to increase sales with them anymore.
So what to do? Here are three things you absolutely must address to stay ahead in the new sales world:
- Knowledge. Train your team and yourself in the new ways to sell. There are several new strategies and methods that most salespeople have only heard about in passing. In addition, marketing and sales are increasingly intertwined. Are your processes prepared for this? Oh yes, and a salesperson without a coherent LinkedIn profile leaves potentials by the wayside.
- Mindset. For most salespeople, you need to work massively on the mindset. The willingness to learn and the activity level often have to be increased significantly. I know salespeople who think and act like they did 20 years ago.
- Courage. Today, as a salesperson and as a sales team, you have to stand out from the crowd much more clearly than before. Where a few years ago the product was sufficient as a sales argument, now you also have to be perceived as something special already in the sales process, and always with added value for the potential customers. A small example: How many of your salespeople regularly write for business magazines or post helpful content on social media?
My call: Tackle these issues today. Chances are high that your competitors are doing just that today and in the future.
To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch
